Time Warner beats Street on profit, advertising

N – Time Warner Inc reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday as it lost less cable advertising than anticipated to Olympics coverage by Comcast Corp's NBC television network.

Shares of Time Warner, which owns a host of cable networks, premium TV service HBO, magazines and a movie studio, rose nearly 4 percent.

For the third quarter, Time Warner logged a 4 percent revenue increase at its networks division, which includes TNT, TBS, HBO and CNN. But the growth stemmed from subscription revenue from cable operators, while advertising in the segment fell 1 percent.

Nathanson said advertising revenue had suffered because of the Olympics, which lasted 17 days in the third quarter and helped rival Comcast's NBC Universal score an additional $1.2 billion in quarterly revenue.

Time Warner's Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes said in a statement that the company was "experiencing good momentum" across most of the Turner networks, such as TBS.

Revenue at the film and TV entertainment unit dropped 12 percent, or $400 million, from a year earlier, when the company released "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the final installment in the fantasy series.

Revenue in the publishing unit, whose titles include Time and Sports Illustrated, declined 6 percent, or $51 million, as advertising sales and subscription revenue fell.